SONOFF MINI-D Review – A Matter-enabled dry contact WiFi switch tested with eWeLink, Home Assistant, and Apple Home

SONOFF MINI-D Review

SONOFF sent us a sample of the MINI-D Wi-Fi smart switch with a dry contact design for review. If you’re familiar with the larger SONOFF 4CH Pro model, which features four channels, the MINI-D operates similarly but is smaller in size and comes with the latest software features. The principle of a dry contact is that the relay contacts are not directly connected to the device’s power supply circuit. Instead, the contacts are isolated and require an external power source to supply power to the load. Make it flexible to use the SONOFF Mini-D in various scenarios such as controlling garage doors, thermostats, or high-current electrical devices through a contactor, like water pumps. It can also manage low-power DC devices such as solenoid valves or small electric motors (<8W). Because the power supplied to the MINI-D and the power passed through its relay can come from different sources, it offers […]

Review of SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for BBC Micro:bit

Smarthon Smart City IoT Starter Kit review

SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for micro:bit is an educational kit for 10+ years old teaching basic projects from turning an LED to more complex projects with multiple sensors, IFTTT integration, and mobile app development. The company sent us a sample of the Start Kit along with a BBC Micro:bit board for review, and we’ll report our experience with the kit in this review. Unboxing of SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for micro:bit The package I received includes the SMARTHON Smart City IoT Starter Kit for Micro:bit and a BBC Micro:bit V2 board since it’s not included in the starter kit. The bottom side of the package lists the main components and features a QR code pointing to the product page. The package includes cardboard and wooden models, various cables, a 180° servo, a screw set, a city map, the Smarthon IoT:bit carrier board for the BBC Micro:bit, […]

KTC A32Q8 Review – A 32-inch 4K Smart Monitor running Google TV

KTC A32Q8 Smart Monitor review

KTC A32Q8 is a 32-inch 4K UHD monitor running Google TV and supporting up to 3840×2160 resolution with a refresh rate of 60Hz. The monitor takes HDMI 2.1, Display1.4, or USB-C video input, comes with two 5W speakers, supports Dolby Audio and HDR, and offers WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity as well as USB 2.0 ports. A voice remote control is also included for Google TV control and configuration.  In this review, we will look at the specifications, go through an unboxing, and test the various features of the KTC A32Q8 Smart Monitor. KTC A32Q8 Smart Monitor specifications Screen Size – 31.5-inch Resolution – 3840×2160 (Ultra HD) Visible area – 697 x 392 mm Panel Type – VA (Vertical Alignment) Aspect Ratio – 16:9 (Widescreen) Refresh Rate – 60Hz Response Time (GtG) – Not specified Brightness 250 cd/m² Brightness (HDR) 250 cd/m² Contrast Ratio 3000:1 (static) Colors 1.07 billion (8-bit + […]

Khadas Mind Maker Kit review – Part 2: Windows 11 Pro on an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V AI mini PC

Khadas Mind Maker Kit Review Windows 11

I’ve already gone through the specifications and an unboxing of the “Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit” powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” processor delivering up to 115 TOPS of AI performance and equipped with 32GB LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD in the first part of the review. I’ve now spent time with the mini PC/developer kit which is now simply called “Khadas Mind Maker Kit”, and I will report my experience with the Windows 11 Home 24H2 operating system in the second part of the review testing features, running benchmarks including an AI benchmark, evaluating networking and storage performance, testing the thermal design while under stress, and taking measurements for fan noise and power consumption. It looks like some AI features may finally be usable on Windows, but I’ll test that in a separate post since everything is new and Microsoft Copilot+, […]

Raspberry Pi CM5 review with different cooling solutions (and camera tribulations)

Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board cooling heatsink active cooler

The day of Raspberry Pi CM5 release, I published a mini review of the Raspberry Pi Development Kit for CM5 showing how to assemble the kit and boot Raspberry Pi OS, and I also ran sbc-bench benchmark to evaluate the performance. Sadly, the Broadcom BCM2712 CPU did throttle during the test meaning cooling was not optimal when the CM5 IO board was inside the IO Case and the Compute Module 5 was only cooled by the fan. So today, I’ll repeat the same test with other cooling solutions namely the official Raspberry Pi Cooler for CM5 (that’s a heatsink only),  and EDATEC’s CM5 active cooler similar to the active cooler for the Raspberry Pi 5, but designed for the CPU module. But before that, I’ll do some house cleaning so to speak since last time, I booted Raspberry Pi OS from an NVMe SSD and I noticed the camera did […]

iKOOLCORE R2 Max review – Part 2: 10GbE on an Intel N100 mini PC with OpenWrt (QWRT), Proxmox VE, Ubuntu 24.04 and pfSense 2.7.2

iKOOLCORE R2 Max Review Proxmox VE Ubuntu 22.04

I’ve already checked out iKOOLCORE R2 Max hardware in the first part of the review with an unboxing and a teardown of the Intel N100 system with two 10GbE ports and two 2.5GbE ports. I’ve now had more time to test it with an OpenWrt fork, Proxmox VE, Ubuntu 24.04, and pfSense, so I’ll report my experience in the second and final part of the review. As a reminder, since I didn’t have any 10GbE gear so far, iKOOLCORE sent me two R2 Max devices, a fanless model and an actively-cooled model. I was told the fanless one was based on Intel N100 SoC, and the actively-cooled one was powered by an Intel Core i3-N305 CPU, but I ended up with two Intel N100 devices. The fanless model will be an OpenWrt 23.05 (QWRT) server, and the actively cooled variant be the device under test/client with Proxmox VE 8.3 server […]

Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit – An Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” mini PC for developers

Khadas Mind 2 AI PC Dev Kit

Khadas recently announced the Mind 2 mini PC with an Intel Core 5 or 7 “Meteor Lake” mini PC. But the company is prepping the launch of another similar device called the “Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit  Dev Workstation” or “Intel Core Ultra Processor (Series 2) AI PC Dev Kit” with a 15th Gen Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” processor offering up to 115 TOPS of AI performance. I’ll just call it “Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit” for shorts. The system ships with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, and Khadas says the new system is designed specifically for developers working on AI PC applications, but apart from the faster SoC, it comes with similar features as the Mind 2. This includes HDMI 2.0 video output, two 40Gbps USB4 ports, Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, as well as two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports […]

Raspberry Pi 500 review with Raspberry Pi Monitor and teardown

Raspberry Pi 500 review with Monitor Speaker

The Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC is just out along with the 15.6-inch Raspberry Pi Monitor and received samples from Raspberry Pi for review a few days ago.  I’ve had time to play with both, so in this review, I’ll go through an unboxing of the kit I received and report my experience with both the keyboard PC and monitor. Unboxing I received two packages. The first one with the Raspberry Pi Monitor, and the second with a Raspberry Pi 500 (UK layout), a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro HDMI to HDMI cable. So not quite a full Raspberry Pi 500 Desktop Kit since there’s no mouse and beginner’s manual but close to it. Let’s start with the keyboard PC. The bottom side of the package has some specs and a logo for the keyboard layout, in this case “UK”. There’s only the keyboard PC in the package. […]

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